Something a GM I’ll be running for will be using. What problems might arise with this)
Basics
Wounds = Con modifier
Vigor = Class Hit Die and FCB
Example: Lvl 1 dwarf barbarian with Con18: Wounds (4) Vigor (13)
Example: Lvl 2 dwarf barbarian with Con18: Wounds (8) Vigor (21)
Healing
All vigor is returned after a full night’s rest. This alleviates the need for wand of cure light wound spamming.
Injuries
When a character loses his vigor and starts taking wounds, he can be (gasp!) wounded. 50% health means losing 25% of your BaB, rounding down. Losing 75% of your health means losing 50% of your BaB rounding down. Your BaB can’t go below 0. Spell casters take this penalty to concentration checks as well.
Example: A lvl 10 Barbarian has 10 BaB. He loses all of his vigor and is wounded. 25% of 10 rounded down is 2, so he is down to 8 BaB. He then becomes greatly wounded, making his BaB 5. He loses his iterative attack.
Thoughts
Injuries suck. You don’t want to be injured. Healing in combat becomes more of a thing now, as you don’t want your meleers to be wounded. It also means that the BBE you are focusing down won’t fight at 100% capacity when he is at 1hp left. And finally, due to Vigor, you don’t need to heal it all up after each fight. This saves on party resources, though as noted before, in combat healing becomes more important.
What do you all think?
I actually just posted my own wounds and vigor meets wound thresholds thread. So, I have been putting a lot of thought into the concept lately.
I feel like scaling physical health with level eliminates the best part of wounds and vigor. The thing that first attracted me to it was the fact that a level 20 fighter can no more take a cannonball to the chest or survive a slit throat than he could at level 1. Combat skill goes up, mortality remains the same.
I also think that level 1 is going to suck. And the whole game is going to suck unless you invest in constitution. People with an 8 constitution are presumably already dead.
Speaking of which, when do you die in this version? If it's 0, I feel like low levels are just going to be mercilessly lethal. There will be no wiggle room for thresholds to come in, someone is going to exceed your vigor by 12 points and you're dead.
How many ways are their to damage wounds directly? Do crits still do it? Howabout flat-footed opponents? Helpless ones? Can sneak attack really be worthy of the name sneak attack if it has to go completely through vigor first?
And how does healing work? Can you target wounds specifically, and does it get full healing or the diminished version from the official wounds and vigor? And do the rules apply the same way to negative energy? God I wouldn't want to have con modifier health in a game where an enemy cleric can blast my life points directly with channel energy!
How does nonlethal work?
And finally, I feel like the penalty could be better. It only scales off vigor, which means being worn out from fighting has no effect, nor does being 1 nonlethal point from getting knocked out. And it still leaves you ready to do impressive acrobatics, dodge a fireball, or counter an enemy mage's spells no matter how bad of a condition you are in.
I also think the penalties are harsh and sudden. There is no sense of being worn down, or building up injuries, it's a difference of a few points between fully functional and operating at 25% capacity.
For my version, I made a threshold penalty, which applies to all d20 rolls, AC and CMD. Drop below half stamina (vigor) and you take a -1. Drop to no stamina and it increases to -2. The same for health (wounds), and they stack, so if you are at 0 stamina and health, you take a -4. On top of that, if your nonlethal exceeds half your max stamina, you take another -1. And then you also have the rules for being at or below 0 health, which include getting staggered, losing health when taking actions, and making saves not to pass out.
One of the things I added to Vigor Wounds is a "Lunch Break" rule
Party sits down for a 1 hour rest they get back Vigor equal to their level + Con Modifier.
If they have drink while they rest (say 1 waterskin each) Increase the amount recovered to level x2 +Con Modifier
If they eat and drink it's Level x3 + Con Modifer.
Can not benefit from more than 1 Lunch Break per 8 hour time period.